Summary of the Research Committee's Activities for 2010-2011

Membership

  • Ran Libeskind-Hadas, David Coons, Gary Evans, Don Remer, and Zach Dodds

Presentations to the Faculty:

  • October 21, 2010

This presentation was designed to be an overview of the HMC-internal call for research proposals for summer 2011. We described the different sources of available funding for those proposals and the constraints they impose. A question and answer period followed, from which emerged a request to provide more consistent feedback.

Items Discussed and Action Taken during the Year

1. The committee agreed on a plan for handling the HMC-internal research proposals for the summer of 2011. 16 positions, eight each funded by the Rose Hills Foundation and the Baker Foundation, would be available. The awards would total $6,250, enough to provide the HMC-recommended stipend to a student, overhead, and $1,250 of discretionary funds for the advisor and student together.

2. The committee created a rubric for judging those proposals and made it public on its website

In addition, complete guidelines for the preparation and submission of HMC-internal research proposals were drafted, vetted, and released at that site. As noted above, the highlights were presented at the HMC faculty meeting of 10/21/2010.

3. The committee evaluated and made recommendations to the Dean of Faculty one week after the first deadline (Jan. 14, 2011). At that time all 16 of the 16 possible student slots had been accounted for. Only one submission had to be declined: the research committee considered itself fortunate that alternative funding (from HHMI) was able to be found for that worthy project.

4. The committee was asked by the Dean of Faculty to review a second call for proposals: these were for faculty stipends only. Five such proposals were made, and four were funded. The fifth would have been funded, but the proposer was already earning more in summer funds than the call’s cutoff.

5. Looking ahead to 2011-2012, the group agreed to reinforce its efforts to encourage proposers to creatively and carefully consider two particular facets of their HMC-internal proposals: (1) how their work can connect back to HMC's curriculum in positive ways and (2) the overall quality of the summer research experience for the student involved. The committee did not feel that this years proposals fared poorly with respect to these criteria. We did feel, however, that these two criteria offered the greatest room for further improvement.

6. The next page summarizes the twenty awards recommended by the research committee for the summer of 2011. This list will be useful to the incoming chair, who will collect reports from those twenty on behalf of the DOF.

Summer 2011 awards recommended by the research committee and funded by the DOF

Baker funds (unrestricted)

Student (Faculty)

Jin-Hwa Chun (Nancy Lape)

Julien Devin (Theresa Lynn)

Alex Hall (Greg Lyzenga)

Morgan Luckey (Adam Edwards)

Emily Putnam (Karl Haushalter)

Christopher Ramos (Anna Ahn)

Brian Soe (Lori Bassman)

Mary Van (David Vosburg)

Rose-Hills funds (So CA students above a certain GPA cutoff)

Student (Faculty)

Yael Mayer and Jeff Hemphill (Michael Erlinger)

Brian Conroy (Steve Adolph)

Brad Jensen (Zachary Dodds)

John Grasel (Dick Haskell)

Steven Hang (Greg Lyzenga)

Steve Matsumoto (Leslie Ward)

Paul Riggins (Vatche Sahakian)

Special DOF call for proposals for faculty summer research stipends, 2011

Faculty (award amount)

Dagan Karp ($5000)

Paul Steinberg ($4000)

David Vosburg ($5000)

Isabel Balseiro ($5000)